Community rallies around Amanda Frape-Inglis
August 8, 2019, 5:43 am
Kara Kinna
A fundraiser is underway for Amanda Frape-Inglis and family, a former Moosomin resident who has been diagnosed and is undergoing treatment for cancer for a second time.
Amanda grew up in Moosomin, and lived and worked in Moosomin most of her life before moving to Teeswater, Ontario six years ago with her husband and four children.
Amanda had surgery for cancer three years ago, and was diagnosed with cancer a second time this May when it was discovered she had metastatic melanoma. She underwent surgery in June to remove half of her left lung and a number of lymph nodes.
After the cancer was discovered, she was forced to quit working, and will be off work for up to a year undergoing treatments.
Amanda’s sister Jennifer Ireland and brother Owen Frape, who both live in Moosomin, have organized a fundraiser for her, and are raffling off a Yeti cooler from McPhail Travel, along with a $100 gift certificate from the Uptown, a gift certificate from The Crate House, and a pair of homemade moccasins from Maureen Roy.
The raffle has taken off, with 6,000 tickets being printed to date as requests for tickets continue to come in and people from Amanda’s home town show their support.
“She’s resilient,” says Jennifer of her sister. “She’s stronger than both of us put together.”
“She’s going to fight it head on,” adds Owen. “On her Facebook post she said people are asking her how she can do this and she’s saying she wasn’t given a choice and that’s the attitude she’s going with.
“We call her the little general,” says Jennifer. “She’s proud and I think her and her husband were worried that it looks like (by acceting help) they can’t figure this out on their own. But it’s not about figuring it out on your own. It’s about how we can’t help from there.”
Both Jennifer and Owen say they want to do what they can to help their sister from Moosomin, because they can’t be by her side in Ontario on a regular basis.
“We hope this helps with just daily life, like if she needs to hire a housekeeper or order some meals in,” says Jennifer.
“If she was here we’d be over there every day, but we’re not, and we can’t be unfortunately,” says Owen.
Both Owen and Jennifer say they were shocked at first by the support from the businesses that wanted to donate to the grand prize, and then by the community support shown by the ticket sales.
“We thought if we sold 200 books that would be cool, and after I posted it on Facebook last Wednesday night, and I stopped counting at 98 books that people had asked for already, and we went and got more tickets printed the next day.
“We are extremely grateful, and blown away yet again by this town.”
The draw for the prizes is September 1.
“I think people in our area like to help out,” says Jennifer. “It was touching to see the support, and I know it means a lot to her too, she’s pleasantly blown away and overwhelmed.”
Jennifer and Owen say it’s hard to see their sister go through something like this and live so far away.
“When you go from a dual income house to one income, and her kids are busy and they are in lots of activities, we want to do anything we can to help her She has a busy, busy life out there so we thought anything we can do to take a bit of the load off.”
Amanda grateful for the support
Amanda says she’s grateful for the support being shown by her home community.
“It’s so overwhelming and it’s very surreal,” she says. “When we’ve done these fundraisers for other people before, you always do the silent auctions or buy the tickets, but then when you walk in somewhere and it has your name on it, it kind of takes your breath away. It’s a little surreal. But everybody has been so generous.
“It’s very humbling too. It’s just cool to be from here. We’re very lucky.”
She says the fundraiser will be a major help to her.
“We’ve got four kids. It will be huge,” she says. “We were not expecting me to be off work at all. We had been doctoring since December, I had been doing CT scans regularly and then they found something abnormal in December and then it just kind of started steamrolling from then. We did a scan in January and March and in April and then all of a sudden we went to find out the results of the last scan and I was put off work immediately. We’ve been doing scans for the past three years, and we just thought it was part of the followup.
“We’ve got four kids, they are all in activities, they are busy, so all of a sudden to have one income completely gone, it’s a bit of a shock.
“Everybody has been so kind and generous. Even the people who have watched you grow up. It’s not even necessarily my friends and their friends, it’s my parents’ friends and friends of my grandparents (who are donating). Some of these people I don’t even know, so it’s like ‘wow!’
“It kind of makes you have to kick ass, there are so many people that are saying ‘I’ve got your back, I’m praying for you, good vibes to you.’ And it’s like ‘man, I have to stand up for these people because they are all behind me.’ There are a lot of people out there who are rooting for me, so there is no other option.”
To buy tickets, contact Jennifer Ireland at Jennifer.Ireland@secpsd.ca.
